1. Field of Invention
The present invention refers to a concentrator and locator device of a solute and to a method for concentrating and locating a solute present in a solution.
2. Related Art
Micro-structured surfaces are known having a geometry such as to reproduce the behaviour of lotus leaves, so as to exploit the known “Lotus Effect”.
Lotus leaves display a particular behaviour when they are wet by a liquid; the liquid forms into distinct droplets due to the micrometric corrugation of such surfaces. Such a milimetric corrugation creates high contact angles at the water—leaf surface—air interface. Consequently, the liquid tends to slide off from the surface without dampening it due to a reduced adhesion at the surface itself.
These surfaces are therefore typically used as self-cleaning surfaces since they have a hydrophobic behaviour.
It is often required to identify a solute present inside the solution. This is typically carried out by using, for example, optical devices based on UV (Ultraviolet) absorption, dynamic light scattering, infrared spectroscopes or devices which exploit chemical properties such as liquid or gas phase chromatography.
However, such devices have the drawback that, when the solution is very diluted, it is difficult to locate the solute, and it is thus necessary to perform an analysis on the entire solution, taking a long time before being able to identify the desired substance.